Skin & Bone is a combination gallery and tattoo studio. The gallery will exhibit art and ethnographic handicrafts related to tattooing, while the studio will have Colin Dale tattooing alongside various guest artists throughout the year. Through his years of travelling and tattooing around the world Colin has had the pleasure to meet and work alongside a wide range of tattoo artists and experts working in ethnographic and other specialized styles. Amongst these friends, we have hand-tattooists from Borneo, Polynesia and Japan as well as some of the world's leading artists in Blackwork and Dotwork coming to visit. Check the homepage http://www.skinandbone.dk/ to see some of the work

Friday, 24 March 2017

Guest Artist: Fabrice Koch Z-Tattoo Interview

Our friend Fabrice Koch was a talented graphic artist long before turning to tattooing. He uses a spontanious brush strokes technique which give a solid framework for more colourful splashes of aquarelle in the background. His years of travelling and graphic sensibilities make him at home with other tribal and traditional artists as we all speak different dialects of the same visual language.

Here is a little eye candy for your senses

Enjoy!

And for the Swedish impaired...

Fabrice
Koch Interview

Fabrice
Koch is a true Renaissance man… Swiss born, German raised and married to an
Indonesian woman, Fabrice is well travelled and fluent in many languages. Those
he doesn’t speak he can still make himself understood in by his friendly
disposition and curious nature. Fabrice’s journey into the tattoo world first
began at the ripe old age of 40 after working several decades as an “Old
School” graphic designer. He was
becoming tired of working with graphic design which was more and more being
taken over by interns with a basic knowledge of Adobe software. For his birthday he was given professional tattoo
equipment from tattooist friends. Fabrice’s “hands on” method of illustration
and friendly disposition transferred well to the world of tattooing and his
spontaneity and problem solving skills meant that he could work anywhere under
any conditions. He combines
representational designs with geometric patterns. Calligraphic lines which appear splashed on
the skin but at the same time are easily readable, together with clean sharp
graphic patterns and texts from his years as a designer. This formula provides
the framework for a tattoo which will stand the test of time and still hold its
graphic sensibilities long after the colours fade. If one had to label his
style it could be said to be, East meets West or better still, Order from
Chaos.

1: Graphic "vs" Fine Art. We work in
a field of commission art by clients with demands for custom work... do you
consider tattooing to be a technical skill or creative expressionism? When does
Craft become Art?

That is a
tricky question since it all has to fit together in a good balance.

To me a
good tattoo starts with the placement and the merging with the anatomy.

Technical
skills are very much needed in the execution of good tattoo, but should not be the
main attention of a tattooist. Composition should be first, not the chase for a
higher technical challenge.

A good
composition can be very simple, but is often more difficult to achieve.

In my case
I'm very lucky to have both types of clients.

The
majority have a motif in mind, often referring to pieces they’ve already seen.

These
clients will show examples of what they like when talking about their future
tattoo.

Others will
just give a very vague idea, a rough limitation in size and placement to let
the artist express.

We also
have rare cases of clients giving complete artistic freedom, which is awesome,
but also a challenge. It’s not easy to just let loose on someone I don’t really
know - in these cases I need to have longer conversations before starting
inking… playing around with different ideas until we both feel comfortable with
it.

(on a piece
of paper or canvas it’s easy to get some scratchy, broken lines - or splashes,
done just in a fraction of a second. Reproduce these expressions needs some
technical skill to make them last in the skin. Often you can see these things
done in a way which will fade in short time. )

2: Figurative "vs" Ornamental. The Western
tattoo tradition of representational symbols seems at odds with the more
abstract tribal patterns. What are the challenges in rendering a picture in a
way that it also compliments the body’s form?

This was
never a question to me. I was at tattoo conventions as a visitor years before
getting myself into tattooing, watching traditional tattoo artist preparing was
the most exciting and the best lessons I could ever have… by learning how to
divide the body up into sections which are designed individually, and still end
in a large organic piece.

I was never
much interested into creating single pictures and afterwards looking for a spot
where it will fit best - although I have my own "Flash“ as well.

But when
using photos (for realistic works) or pre-drawn flashes it is still important
to play around with different sizes, positions and angles, until getting to the
point where it perfectly fits to the anatomy.

3: Calligraphy "vs" Water Colour.
Your tattoos carry a brush and Ink quality to them... the use of a solid
Eastern calligraphy framework combined with a more Western aquarelle
watercolour fill. Is it difficult to get static needle grouping to emulate spontaneous
brush strokes and colour bleeds? What is most important in a tattooing context?

Well, I
started playing around with these so called "new styles“ many years ago.

I remember
the first years, people kept asking me whether these ideas/designs will work as
a tattoo.

Several times
I got answers like, "Yes, I like your idea - but it is not a tattoo, it’s
a nice drawing“!

It took me
some time before I got enough reference to show that I was able to reproduce my
drawings on skin. These last few years watercolor has become a hyped thing,
this fact pushed me further, since I didn’t want to swim in the mainstream, so
I got deeper into eastern calligraphy techniques.

The true
challenge is to reproduce the spontaneity of an Indian ink brushstroke with
precise tools, and at the same time making sure that it is solid enough to
resist the ravages of time

Spreading
randomly splatters and strokes looks easy, but it takes time to learn to do it
naturally. One can often see very "constructed" splatters or
splashes, but this brings out the worst in me.

I like to
joke around when I get asked how I do it... I learned the anatomy of ink.

My personal
watercolour technique is using solid colours... to give the lighter colours a
chance to last instead of just watering them down. I have to think differently
doing a watercolor on paper than when putting it into skin, because skin is
living and getting older, sun will also influence the aging of a tattoo. I
speak to my clients about their habits of enjoying the sun. (Those who love to
have extended sunbaths will get stronger colors than people staying away from
the sun.)

4: Individualism " vs" Tradition.
Although you seem to live in the Avantgarde school, most of your inner circle
seem involved in traditional and cultural tattooing. Where do these worlds meet
and what can they learn from each other?

Individualism
vs. Tradition, one cannot live without the other. If there is no avant-garde
one will never notice tradition, and there is no avant-garde without a solid
traditional foundation.

I’m glad
that the tattoo scene opened up widely within the last years. This gives the
opportunity to artists and tattoo lovers to have more variety of expressing
themselves.

Breaking
rules and creating out of step things means you have to know and understand the
basics.

It’s a bit
like if you want to play jazz - or better free jazz, you just can’t do it without
the knowledge of scales and a certain portion of musical skills. "letting
go“ means to have a rock solid fundament to rely upon. Modern tattooing should
never forget the history.

The other
side is that one can innovate traditional tattoos... not only copying and
keeping up what has been done for centuries. This has to be done very
sensitively by keeping the respect and understanding of the roots. From time to
time it happens that I find clients who allow me to give tribal tattoos a more
contemporary look. In Borneo for example, members of the local Iban tribe are
quite open and enthusiastic about my new versions of ancient designs - I even
inspired some local artists to play around with their cultural heritage.

Actually I’m
looking forward to play around with other traditional stuff in future.

5: Freehand "vs" Stencil. Graphic
programs can be an important tool for rendering designs which combine
photographic and geometric elements as well as giving the client a good idea of
how the finished tattoo will look... however you still favour working freehand.
What are the challenges and rewards of undertaking such a journey without
having a clear picture of the destination?

I don’t
want to give myself a limitation between freehand and stencil work. It’s true that
I actually freehand a lot in my work, especially when I work "on the
road". Freehand guaranties a better flow with the anatomy and gives me
more creative freedom. On the other hand it requires more trust from my
clients. Some are traveling internationally to my private atelier without
knowing anything about what I have in mind for them.

This puts
me in a situation between feeling comfortable and a high pressure doing the
right thing.

In most
cases even I have no idea where the creative journey will lead us. But this is
exactly the kind of suspense which I try to bring into the tattoo, as well as
keeping the spontaneity in the parts where I'm using strict geometric patterns.

Working
with graphic programs helps a lot, but should never been seen as a source of
creativity.

I
personally don’t like a lot of new stuff where one can clearly see that it’s
just randomly googling 2 or 3 photographs, melting them together with photoshop
- ready in the tattoo-instant soup.

Using
computer software is only a comfortable tool, which I like to use to create
some of my compositions mixing realistic parts melting together with
raster-designs for example.

But even
with that way of working I'm using a lot of hand drawn parts for my
compositions.

Again
comparing to music it is choosing between a perfectly arranged song to a jam
session, which can be bound in defined chord progression, or totally open.

I remember
a question an apprentice of a tattoo-shop I was guesting at asked me while
watching me tattooing, "Fabrice, why are you actually putting stencil on when you don’t even follow it?“

I answered,
"sometimes I just need it to be sure what I don’t want to do“.

I don’t
want to limit myself, better keep my mind open to all kinds of possible
techniques to push myself to new borders.

Fabrice
will be attending Prison Ink in Horsens, Denmark the 25-27th of May and doing a
guest spot in København the following week.